TELEVISION.

Tnt's Cineplex Is Booming

With `Don Quixote,' `the Virginian' And Other Well-crafted Films, The Turner Channel Is Leading A Cable Movement Toward Better Made-for-tv Movies That Leave The Old-line Networks In The Dust

April 06, 2000|By Allan Johnson, Tribune Television Writer.

If Sunday's new made-for-television movie "Don Quixote" had been on a broadcast network rather than on cable, it might not be as good as it is.

What premieres at 7 p.m. on TNT puts less emphasis on special effects and devotes more time to character development and that is what makes this adaptation of the story of Cervantes' famous kook so effective.

And much of the credit goes to where it's airing: on TNT.

The network has become a place where filmmakers are allowed to make the projects that they want to, rather than have to worry about making them commercially viable.

With such films as "George Wallace," "The Virginian" and "A Slight Case of Murder," TNT has become the industry leader for quality made-for-television movies.

That mindset isn't limited to TNT, as some other cable networks are attempting to create viable alternatives to the disease-of-the-week or ripped-from-the-headlines films normally reserved for NBC, ABC or CBS.

The USA Network has within the last two or three years moved away from a slate of B-movies in favor of more fascinating, thought-provoking films like last year's sensitive "Evolution's Child." Lifetime's movies, while sometimes indulging in the familiar women-in-danger formula, have also given viewers several meatier, issues-oriented motion pictures, such as the pre-Civil War era romance "The Courage to Love," which aired earlier this year. The Fox Family Channel created an enlightening historical piece with the holiday special "St. Patrick, the Irish Legend."

The Sci-Fi Channel, MTV, VH1 and E! Entertainment Television are among others creating films that aspire to be more than run-of-the-mill flicks.

Arguably coming into its own more than most is TNT, which, in making "Don Quixote," chose to study the title character's mentally skewed motivations, as opposed to making it a special effects-driven film aimed at the bread-and-circuses crowd, as is the case with some network movies.

If one of the traditional networks had made "Don Quixote," the huge Spanish novel published in two volumes in 1605 and 1615, there's a good chance the following self-revealing speech from the addled nobleman from La Mancha--given in a moment of lucidity after he had been embarrassed at a dinner party--might not have seen the light of day:

"My intention is to do wrong to no man, but good to all the world. Are you all so content with your lives of safety and comfort? Are eating and sleeping enough for you? Do you not yearn, all of you, for a voyage of discovery, of adventure, of great deeds, lasting fame and battles for truth and justice?"

"You spotted the moment that is most important to me," says John Lithgow, who plays Quixote. "I always said the story of a madman is only as good as his moments of sanity.

"Unless there is a moment of clarity and redemption, there's no point in doing it."

And Lithgow, who is the spacey alien Dick Solomon on NBC's "3rd Rock from the Sun," wanted to do "Don Quixote" in a big way, so he called producer Robert Halmi Sr., who has made such literary-based TV movies as "The Odyssey" and "Gulliver's Travels."

Two days later, Halmi called Lithgow to say the project had been set up at TNT, for which Halmi had made "A Christmas Carol" and "Animal Farm."

"In the case of `Don Quixote,' this was a very difficult task because it's a massive book. It's a 1,000-page book with 200 adventures, and we had to sort of whittle it down and shape it into movie size and scale," says Lithgow, 54, who was an executive producer with Halmi.

As it is, "Quixote" fits into a 2-hour hole on TNT. The broadcast networks, which usually run movies in two-hour chunks, might have either asked for a 30-minute trim, or gone the other way and expanded it into a bloated two-part, four-hour special.

Lithgow says TNT was "so supportive" of not only the length, but also of other considerations.

"They gave us a lot of independence. I mean, we didn't even feel their presence much while we were actually making it. They weighed in heavily in postproduction, but always in a very, very supportive way. And they knew they had a really good thing here."

Lithgow is now looking for another project that he can get produced at TNT. Apparently he followed Danny Glover's example.

The star of the "Lethal Weapon" movies did "Buffalo Soldiers" for TNT three years ago, a western about black cavalrymen who battled Native American warriors following the Civil War.

Glover was involved in a separate project that most motion picture studios were passing up: "Freedom Song," a story about the tenuous relationship between an African-American father and son during the 1960s civil rights struggle in the South. The story was framed by the protest activities of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).